CNN's John Zarella Documents His More-Than 3 Hours Trying to Vote in the Sunshine State on Tuesday...
By Brad Friedman on 10/22/2008, 6:30am PT  

Everything we've been warning about for years here at The BRAD BLOG --- and that both the Obama and McCain campaigns continue to ignore --- seems to have been neatly wrapped up in a report by John Zarella of CNN in a report on his personal experience during early voting in Florida...

After an hour and a half, Zarella reported he was "almost inside the door." However, according to those coming out at that time, "it was a big mess" with "machines breaking."

It ultimately took Zarrella 3 hours and 15 minutes to get to the head of the line. "There are two machines that actually print out the ballots," Zarrella explained, "and both of the machines went down for a period of about 45 minutes."

Technical problems were also noted elsewhere in Florida on Monday. In Jacksonville, some of the vote scanning machines malfunctioned, and seven out of the fifteen had to be replaced because they were rejecting ballots. At Miami Beach City Hall, it was reported that "some of the computers used to check in voters weren't working, though there were no problems with the optical scan machines used to count ballots."

His full report, with video, is at RAW STORY...

If you think that's bad, just wait for the Election Day meltdown. Why the Obama campaign and DNC are not raising holy hell --- and demanding paper ballots for every voter, in every precinct, in every state, along with back-up paper plans for the e-registration computers (as untested and unreliable as the e-voting machines, and made by the same failed private companies) --- I still cannot tell you. They have the most to lose, but still seem to be in a complete state of denial about these problems.

Steve Rosenfeld at AlterNet also has details on the sorely lacking Democratic strategy for dealing with voting machine problems.

At best, it can be said that Obama and the DNC are (again) bringing a dull butter knife to a gun fight. Minus the knife.

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